The Master
Khurum was an industrious and an honest man. What he was employed to
do he did diligently, and he did it well and faithfully. He received
no wages that were not his due. Industry and honesty are the virtues
peculiarly inculcated in this Degree. They are common and homely
virtues; but not for that beneath our notice. As the bees do not
love or respect the drones, so Masonry neither loves nor respects
the idle and those who live by their wits; and least of all those
parasitic acari that live upon themselves. For those who are
indolent are likely to become dissipated and vicious; and perfect
honesty, which ought to be the common qualification of all, is more
rare than diamonds. To do earnestly and steadily, and to do
faithfully and honestly that which we have to do--perhaps this wants
but little, when looked at from every point of view, of including
the whole body of the moral law; and even in their commonest and
homeliest application, these virtues belong to the character of a
Perfect Master.

Idleness is the burial of a living man. For
an idle person is so useless to any purposes of God and man, that he
is like one who is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessities
of the world; and he only lives to spend his time, and eat the
fruits of the earth. Like a vermin or a wolf, when his time comes,
he dies and perishes, and in the meantime is nought. He neither
ploughs nor carries burdens: all that he does is either unprofitable
or mischievous.

It is a vast work that any man may do, if he
never be idle: and it is a huge way that a man may go in virtue, if
he never go out of his way by a vicious habit or a great crime: and
he who perpetually reads good books, if his parts be answerable,
will have a huge stock of knowledge.

St. Ambrose, and from
his example, St. Augustine, divided every day into these tertias of
employment: eight hours they spent in the necessities of nature and
recreation: eight hours in charity, in doing assistance to others,
dispatching their business, reconciling their enmities, reproving
their vices, correcting their errors, instructing their ignorance,
and in transacting the affairs of their dioceses; and the other
eight hours they spent in study and prayer.

We think, at the
age of twenty, that life is much too long for that which we have to
learn and do; and that there is an almost fabulous distance between
our age and that of our grandfather. But when, at the age of sixty,
if we are fortunate enough to reach it, or unfortunate enough, as
the case may be, and according as we have profitably invested or
wasted our time, we halt, and look back along the way we have come,
and cast up and endeavour to balance our accounts with time and
opportunity, we find that we have made life much too short, and
thrown away a huge portion of our time. Then we, in our mind, deduct
from the sum total of our years the hours that we have needlessly
passed in sleep; the working-hours each day, during which the
surface of the mind's sluggish pool has not been stirred or ruffied
by a single thought; the days that we have gladly got rid of, to
attain some real or fancied object that lay beyond, in the way
between us and which stood irksomely the intervening days; the hours
worse than wasted in follies and dissipation, or misspent in useless
and unprofitable studies; and we acknowledge, with a sigh, that we
could have learned and done, in half a score of years well spent,
more than we have done in all our forty years of manhood.

To
learn and to do !--this is the soul's work here below. The soul
grows as truly as an oak grows. As the tree takes the carbon of the
air, the dew, the rain, and the light, and the food that the earth
supplies to its roots, and by its mysterious chemistry transmutes
them into sap and fibre, into wood and leaf, and flower and fruit,
and colour and perfume, so the soul imbibes knowledge and by a
divine alchemy changes what it learns into its own substance, and
grows from within outwardly with an inherent force and power like
those that lie hidden in the grain of wheat.

The soul hath
its senses, like the body, that may be cultivated, enlarged,
refined, as itself grows in stature and proportion; and he who
cannot appreciate a fine painting or statue, a noble poem, a sweet
harmony, a heroic thought, or a disinterested action, or to whom the
wisdom of philosophy is but foolishness and babble, and the loftiest
truths of less importance than the price of stocks or cotton, or the
elevation of baseness to once, merely lives on the level of
commonplace, and fitly prides himself upon that inferiority of the
soul's senses, which is the inferiority and imperfect development of
the soul itself.

To sleep little, and to study much; to say
little, and to hear and think much; to learn, that we may be able to
do, and then to do, earnestly and vigorously, whatever may be
required of us by duty, and by the good of our fellows, our country,
and mankind,-- these are the duties of every Mason who desires to
imitate the Master Khurum.

The duty of a Mason as an honest
man is plain and easy. It requires of us honesty in contracts,
sincerity in arming, simplicity in bargaining, and faithfulness in
performing. Lie not at all, neither in a little thing nor in a
great, neither in the substance nor in the circumstance, neither in
word nor deed: that is, pretend not what is false; cover not what is
true; and let the measure of your affirmation or denial be the
understanding of your contractor; for he who deceives the buyer or
the seller by speaking what is true, in a sense not intended or
understood by the other, is a liar and a thief. A Perfect Master
must avoid that which deceives, equally with that which is
false.

Let your prices be according to that measure of good
and evil which is established in the fame and common accounts of the
wisest and most merciful men, skilled in that manufacture or
commodity; and the gain such, which, without scandal, is allowed to
persons in all the same circumstances.

In intercourse with
others, do not do all which thou mayest lawfully do; but keep
something within thy power; and, because there is a latitude of gain
in buying and selling, take not thou the utmost penny that is
lawful, or which thou thinkest so; for although it be lawful, yet it
is not safe; and he who gains all that he can gain lawfully, this
year, will possibly be tempted, next year, to gain something
unlawfully.

Let no man, for his own poverty, become more
oppressing and cruel in his bargain; but quietly, modestly,
diligently, and patiently recommend his estate to God, and follow
his interest, and leave the success to Him.

Detain not the
wages of the hireling; for every degree of detention of it beyond
the time, is injustice and uncharitableness, and grinds his face
till tears and blood come out; but pay him exactly according to
covenant, or according to his needs.

Religiously keep all
promises and covenants, though made to your disadvantage, though
afterward you perceive you might have done better; and let not any
precedent act of yours be altered by any after-accident. Let nothing
make you break your promise, unless it be unlawful or impossible;
that is, either out of your nature or out of your civil power,
yourself being under the power of another; or that it be intolerably
inconvenient to yourself, and of no advantage to another; or that
you have leave expressed or reasonably presumed.

Let no man
take wages or fees for a work that he cannot do, or cannot with
probability undertake; or in some sense profitably, and with ease,
or with advantage manage. Let no man appropriate to his own use,
what God, by a special mercy, or the Republic, hath made common; for
that is against both Justice and Charity.

That any man should
be the worse for us, and for our direct act, and by our intention,
is against the rule of equity, of justice, and of charity. We then
do not that to others, which we would have done to ourselves; for we
grow richer upon the ruins of their fortune.

It is not honest
to receive anything from another without returning him an equivalent
therefor. The gamester who wins the money of another is dishonest.
There should be no such thing as bets and gaming among Masons: for
no honest man should desire that for nothing which belongs to
another. The merchant who sells an inferior article for a sound
price, the speculator who makes the distresses and needs of others
fill his exchequer are neither fair nor honest, but base, ignoble,
unfit for immortality.

It should be the earnest desire of
every Perfect Master so to live and deal and act, that when it comes
to him to die, he may be able to say, and his conscience to adjudge,
that no man on earth is poorer, because he is richer; that what he
hath he has honestly earned, and no man can go before God, and claim
that by the rules of equity administered in His great chancery, this
house in which we die, this land we devise to our heirs this money
that enriches those who survive to bear our name, is his and not
ours, and we in that forum are only his trustees. For it is most
certain that God is just, and will sternly enforce every such trust;
and that to all whom we despoil, to all whom we defraud, to all from
whom we take or win anything whatever, without fair consideration
and equivalent, He will decree a full and adequate
compensation.

Be careful, then, that thou receive no wages,
here or elsewhere, that are not thy due ! For if thou doest, thou
wrongst some one, by taking that which in God's chancery belongs to
him; and whether that which thou takest thus be wealth, or rank, or
influence, or reputation or affection, thou wilt surely be held to
make full satisfaction.

VI. INTIMATE SECRETARY. (Confidential
Secretary.)

You are especially taught in this Degree
to be zealous and faithful; to be disinterested and benevolent; and
to act the peacemaker, in case of dissensions, disputes, and
quarrels among the brethren.

Duty is the moral magnetism
which controls and guides the true Mason's course over the
tumultuous seas of life. Whether the stars of honour, reputation,
and reward do or do not shine, in the light of day or in the
darkness of the night of trouble and adversity, in calm or storm,
that unerring magnet still shows him the true course to steer, and
indicates with certainty where-away lies the port which not to reach
involves shipwreck and dishonour. He follows its silent bidding, as
the mariner, when land is for many days not in sight, and the ocean
without path or landmark spreads out all around him, follows the
bidding of the needle, never doubting that it points truly to the
north. To perform that duty, whether the performance be rewarded or
unrewarded, is his sole care. And it doth not matter, though of this
performance there may be no witnesses, and though what he does will
be forever unknown to all mankind.

A little consideration
will teach us that Fame has other limits than mountains and oceans;
and that he who places happiness in the frequent repetition of his
name, may spend his life in propagating it, without any danger of
weeping for new worlds, or necessity of passing the Atlantic
sea.

If, therefore, he who imagines the world to be filled
with his actions and praises, shall subduct from the number of his
encomiasts all those who are placed below the flight of fame, and
who hear in the valley of life no voice but that of necessity; all
those who imagine themselves too important to regard him, and
consider the mention of his name as a usurpation of their time; all
who are too much or too little pleased with themselves to attend to
anything external; all who are attracted by pleasure, or chained
down by pain to unvaried ideas; all who are withheld from attending
his triumph by different pursuits; and all who slumber in universal
negligence; he will find his renown straitened by nearer bounds than
the rocks of Caucasus; and perceive that no man can be venerable or
formidable, but to a small part of his fellow-creatures. And
therefore, that we may not languish in our endeavors after
excellence, it is necessary that, as Africanus counsels his
descendants, we raise our eyes to higher prospects, and contemplate
our future and eternal state, without giving up our hearts to the
praise of crowds, or fixing our hopes on such rewards as human power
can bestow.

We are not born for ourselves alone; and our
country claims her share, and our friends their share of us. As all
that the earth produces is created for the use of man, so men are
created for the sake of men, that they may mutually do good to one
another. In this we ought to take nature for our guide, and throw
into the public stock the ounces of general utility, by a
reciprocation of duties; sometimes by receiving, sometimes by
giving, and sometimes to cement human society by arts, by industry,
and by our resources.

Suffer others to be praised in thy
presence, and entertain their good and glory with delight; but at no
hand disparage them, or lessen the report, or make an objection; and
think not the advancement of thy brother is a lessening of thy
worth. Upbraid no man's weakness to him to discomfit him, neither
report it to disparage him, neither delight to remember it to lessen
him, or to set thyself above him; nor ever praise thyself or
dispraise any man else, unless some sufficient worthy end do hallow
it.

Remember that we usually disparage others upon slight
grounds and little instances; and if a man be highly recommended, we
think him sufficiently lessened, if we can but charge one sin of
folly or inferiority in his account. We should either be more severe
to ourselves, or less so to others, and consider that whatsoever
good any one can think or say of us, we can tell him of many
unworthy and foolish and perhaps worse actions of ours, any one of
which, done by another, would be enough, with us, to destroy his
reputation.

If we think the people wise and sagacious, and
just and appreciative, when they praise and make idols of us, let us
not call them unlearned and ignorant, and ill and stupid judges,
when our neighbour is cried up by public fame and popular
noises.

Every man hath in his own life sins enough, in his
own mind trouble enough, in his own fortunes evil enough, and in
performance of his offices failings more than enough, to entertain
his own inquiry; so that curiosity after the affairs of others can
not be without envy and an ill mind. The generous man will be
solicitous and inquisitive into the beauty and order of a
well-governed family, and after the virtues of an excellent person;
but anything for which men keep locks and bars, or that blushes to
see the light, or that is either shameful in manner or private in
nature, this thing will not be his care and business.

It
should be objection sufficient to exclude any man from the society
of Masons, that he is not disinterested and generous, both in his
acts, and in his opinions of men, and his constructions of their
conduct. He who is selfish and grasping, or censorious and
ungenerous, will not long remain within the strict limits of honesty
and truth, but will shortly commit injustice. He who loves himself
too much must needs love others too little; and he who habitually
gives harsh judgment will not long delay to give unjust
judgment.

The generous man is not careful to return no more
than he receives; but prefers that the balances upon the ledgers of
benefits shall be in his favour. He who hath received pay in full
for all the benefits and favours that he has conferred, is like a
spendthrift who has consumed his whole estate, and laments over an
empty exchequer. He who requites my favours with ingratitude adds
to, instead of diminishing, my wealth; and he who cannot return a
favour is equally poor, whether his inability arises from poverty of
spirit, sordidness of soul, or pecuniary indigence.

If he is
wealthy who hath large sums invested, and the mass of whose fortune
consists in obligations that bind other men to pay him money, he is
still more so to whom many owe large returns of kindnesses and
favours. Beyond a moderate sum each year, the wealthy man merely
invests his means: and that which he never uses is still like
favours unreturned and kindnesses unreciprocated, an actual and real
portion of his fortune.

Generosity and a liberal spirit make
men to be humane and genial, open-hearted, frank, and sincere,
earnest to do good, easy and contented, and well-wishers of mankind.
They protect the feeble against the strong, and the defenceless
against rapacity and craft. They succour and comfort the poor, and
are the guardians, under God, of his innocent and helpless wards.
They value friends more than riches or fame, and gratitude more than
money or power. They are noble by God's patent, and their
escutcheons and quarterings are to be found in heaven's great book
of heraldry. Nor can any man any more be a Mason than he can be a
gentleman, unless he is generous, liberal, and disinterested. To be
liberal, but only of that which is our own; to be generous, but only
when we have first been just; to give, when to give deprives us of a
luxury or a comfort, this is Masonry indeed.

He who is
worldly, covetous, or sensual must change before he can be a good
Mason. If we are governed by inclination and not by duty; if we are
unkind, severe, censorious, or injurious, in the relations or
intercourse of life; if we are unfaithful parents or undutiful
children; if we are harsh masters or faithless servants; if we are
treacherous friends or bad neighbours or bitter competitors or
corrupt unprincipled politicians or overreaching dealers in
business, we are wandering at a great distance from the true Masonic
light.

Masons must be kind and affectionate one to another.
Frequenting the same temples, kneeling at the same altars, they
should feel that respect and that kindness for each other, which
their common relation and common approach to one God should inspire.
There needs to be much more of the spirit of the ancient fellowship
among us; more tenderness for each other's faults, more forgiveness,
more solicitude for each other's improvement and good fortune;
somewhat of brotherly feeling, that it be not shame to use the word
"brother."

Nothing should be allowed to interfere with that
kindness and affection: neither the spirit of business, absorbing,
eager, and overreaching, ungenerous and hard in its dealings, keen
and bitter in its competitions, low and sordid in its purposes; nor
that of ambition, selfish, mercenary, restless, circumventing,
living only in the opinion of others, envious of the good fortune of
others, miserably vain of its own success, unjust, unscrupulous, and
slanderous.

He that does me a favour, hath bound me to make
him a return of thankfulness. The obligation comes not by covenant,
nor by his own express intention; but by the nature of the thing;
and is a duty springing up within the spirit of the obliged person,
to whom it is more natural to love his friend, and to do good for
good, than to return evil for evil; because a man may forgive an
injury, but he must never forget a good turn. He that refuses to do
good to them whom he is bound to love, or to love that which did him
good, is unnatural and monstrous in his affections, and thinks all
the world born to minister to him; with a greediness worse than that
of the sea, which, although it receives all rivers into itself, yet
it furnishes the clouds and springs with a return of all they need.
Our duty to those who are our benefactors is, to esteem and love
their persons, to make them proportionable returns of service, or
duty, or profit, according as we can, or as they need, or as
opportunity presents itself; and according to the greatness of their
kindnesses.

The generous man cannot but regret to see
dissensions and disputes among his brethren. Only the base and
ungenerous delight in discord. It is the poorest occupation of
humanity to labour to make men think worse of each other, as the
press, and too commonly the pulpit, changing places with the
hustings and the tribune, do. The duty of the Mason is to endeavour
to make man think better of his neighbour; to quiet, instead of
aggravating difficulties; to bring together those who are severed or
estranged; to keep friends from becoming foes, and to persuade foes
to become friends. To do this, he must needs control his own
passions, and be not rash and hasty, nor swift to take offence, nor
easy to be angered.

For anger is a professed enemy to
counsel. It is a direct storm, in which no man can be heard to speak
or call from without; for if you counsel gently, you are
disregarded; if you urge it and be vehement, you provoke it more. It
is neither manly nor ingenuous. It makes marriage to be a necessary
and unavoidable trouble; friendships and societies and
familiarities, to be intolerable. It multiplies the evils of
drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine to run into madness. It
makes innocent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. It turns
friendship into hatred; it makes a man lose himself, and his reason
and his argument, in disputation. It turns the desires of knowledge
into an itch of wrangling. It adds insolency to power. It turns
justice into cruelty, and judgment into oppression. It changes
discipline into tediousness and hatred of liberal institution. It
makes a prosperous man to be envied, and the unfortunate to be
unpitied.

See, therefore, that first controlling your own
temper, and governing your own passions, you fit yourself to keep
peace and harmony among other men, and especially the brethren.
Above all remember that Masonry is the realm of peace, and that
"among Masons there must be no dissension, but only that noble
emulation., which can best work and best agree." Wherever there is
strife and hatred among the brethren, there is no Masonry; for
Masonry is Peace, and Brotherly Love, and Concord.

Masonry is
the great Peace Society of the world. Wherever it exists, it
struggles to prevent international difficulties and disputes; and to
bind Republics, Kingdoms, and Empires together in one great band of
peace and amity. It would not so often struggle in vain, if Masons
knew their power and valued their oaths.

Who can sum up the
horrors and woes accumulated in a single war? Masonry is not dazzled
with all its pomp and circumstance, all its glitter and glory. War
comes with its bloody hand into our very dwellings. It takes from
ten thousand homes those who lived there in peace and comfort, held
by the tender ties of family and kindred. It drags them away, to die
untended, of fever or exposure, in infectious climes; or to be
hacked, torn, and mangled in the fierce fight; to fall on the gory
field, to rise no more, or to be borne away, in awful agony, to
noisome and horrid hospitals. The groans of the battle-field are
echoed in sighs of bereavement from thousands of desolated hearths.
There is a skeleton in every house, a vacant chair at every table.
Returning, the soldier brings worse sorrow to his home, by the
infection which he has caught, of camp-vices. The country is
demoralized. The national mind is brought down, from the noble
interchange of kind offices with another people, to wrath and
revenge, and base pride, and the habit of measuring brute strength
against brute strength, in battle. Treasures are expended, that
would suffice to build ten thousand churches, hospitals, and
universities, or rib and tie together a continent with rails of
iron. If that treasure were sunk in the sea, it would be calamity
enough; but it is put to worse use; for it is expended in cutting
into the veins and arteries of human life, until the earth is
deluged with a sea of blood.

Such are the lessons of this
Degree. You have vowed to make them the rule, the law, and the guide
of your life and conduct. If you do so, you will be entitled,
because fitted, to advance in Masonry. If you do not, you have
already gone too far.

VII. PROVOST AND JUDGE.

THE lesson
which this Degree inculcates is JUSTICE, in decision and judgment,
and in our intercourse and dealing with other men.

In a
country where trial by jury is known, every intelligent man is
liable to be called on to act as a judge, either of fact alone, or
of fact and law mingled; and to assume the heavy responsibilities
which belong to that character.

Those who are invested with
the power of judgment should judge the causes of all persons
uprightly and impartially, without any personal consideration of the
power of the mighty, or the bribe of the rich, or the needs of the
poor. That is the cardinal rule, which no one will dispute; though
many fail to observe it. But they must do more. They must divest
themselves of prejudice and preconception. They must hear patiently,
remember accurately, and weigh carefully the facts and the arguments
offered before them. They must not leap hastily to conclusions, nor
form opinions before they have heard all. They must not presume
crime or fraud. They must neither be ruled by stubborn pride of
opinion, nor be too facile and yielding to the views and arguments
of others. In deducing the motive from the proven act, they must not
assign to the act either the best or the worst motives, but those
which they would think it just and fair for the world to assign to
it, if they themselves had done it; nor must they endeavour to make
many little circumstances, that weigh nothing separately, weigh much
together, to prove their own acuteness and sagacity. These are sound
rules for every juror, also, to observe.

In our intercourse
with others, there are two kinds of injustice: the first, of those
who offer an injury; the second, of those who have it in their power
to avert an injury from those to whom it is offered, and yet do it
not. So active injustice may be done in two ways--by force and by
fraud,--of which force is lion-like, and aud fox-like,--both utterly
repugnant to social duty, but fraud the more
detestable.

Every wrong done by one man to another, whether
it affect his person, his property, his happiness, or his
reputation, is an offense against the law of justice. The field of
this Degree is therefore a wide and vast one; and Masonry seeks for
the most impressive mode of enforcing the law of justice, and the
most effectual means of preventing wrong and injustice.

To
this end it teaches this great and momentous truth: that wrong and
injustice once done cannot be undone; but are eternal in their
consequences; once committed, are numbered with the irrevocable
Past; that the wrong that is done contains its own retributive
penalty as surely and as naturally as the acorn contains the oak.
Its consequences are its punishment; it needs no other, and can have
no heavier; they are involved in its commission, and cannot be
separated from it. A wrong done to another is an injury done to our
own Nature, an offence against our own souls, a disfiguring of the
image of the Beautiful and Good. Punishment is not the execution of
a sentence, but the occurrence of an effect. It is ordained to
follow guilt, not by the decree of God as a judge, but by a law
enacted by Him as the Creator and Legislator of the Universe. It is
not an arbitrary and artificial annexation, but an ordinary and
logical consequence; and therefore must be borne by the wrong-doer,
and through him may flow on to others. It is the decision of the
infinite justice of God, in the form of law.

There can be no
interference with, or remittance of, or protection from, the natural
effects of our wrongful acts. God will not interpose between the
cause and its consequence; and in that sense there can be no
forgiveness of sins. The act which has debased our soul may be
repented of, may be turned from; but the injury is done. The
debasement may be redeemed by after-efforts, the stain obliterated
by bitterer struggles and severer sufferings; but the efforts and
the endurance which might have raised the soul to the loftiest
heights are now exhausted in merely regaining what it has lost.
There must always be a wide difference between him who only ceases
to do evil, and him who has always done well.

He will
certainly be a far more scrupulous watcher over his conduct, and far
more careful of his deeds, who believes that those deeds will
inevitably bear their natural consequences, exempt from after
intervention, than he who believes that penitence and pardon will at
any time unlink the chain of sequences. Surely we shall do less
wrong and injustice, if the conviction is fixed and embedded in our
souls that everything done is done irrevocably, that even the
Omnipotence of God cannot uncommit a deed, cannot make that undone
which has been done; that every act of ours must bear its allotted
fruit, according to the everlasting laws, --must remain forever
ineffaceably inscribed on the tablets of Universal Nature.

If
you have wronged another, you may grieve, repent, and resolutely
determine against any such weakness in future. You may, so far as it
is possible, make reparation. It is well. The injured party may
forgive you, according to the meaning of human language; but the
deed is done; and all the powers of Nature, were they to conspire in
your behalf, could not make it undone; the consequences to the body,
the consequences to the soul, though no man may perceive them, are
there, are written in the annals of the Past, and must reverberate
throughout all time.

Repentance for a wrong done, bears, like
every other act, its own fruit, the fruit of purifying the heart and
amending the Future, but not of effacing the Past. The commission of
the wrong is an irrevocable act; but it does not incapacitate the
soul to do right for the future. Its consequences cannot be
expunged; but its course need not be pursued. Wrong and evil
perpetrated, though ineffaceable, call for no despair, but for
efforts more energetic than before. Repentance is still as valid as
ever; but it is valid to secure the Future, not to obliterate the
Past.

Even the pulsations of the air, once set in motion by
the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they
gave rise. Their quickly-attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to
human ears. But the waves of air thus raised perambulate the surface
of earth and ocean, and in less than twenty hours, every atom of the
atmosphere takes up the altered movement due to that infinitesimal
portion of primitive motion which has been conveyed to it through
countless channels, and which must continue to influence its path
throughout its future existence. The air is one vast library, on
whose pages is forever written all that man has ever said or even
whispered. There, in their mutable, but unerring characters, mixed
with the earliest, as well as the latest signs of mortality, stand
forever recorded, vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled;
perpetuating, in the movements of each particle, all in unison, the
testimony of man's changeful will. God reads that book, though we
cannot.

So earth, air, and ocean are the eternal witnesses of
the acts that we have done. No motion impressed by natural causes or
by human agency is ever obliterated. The track of every keel which
has ever disturbed the surface of the ocean remains forever
registered in the future movements of all succeeding particles which
may occupy its place. Every criminal is by the laws of the Almighty
irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime; for every atom of
his mortal frame, through whatever changes its particles may
migrate, will still retain, adhering to it through every
combination, some movement derived from that very muscular effort by
which the crime itself was perpetrated.

What if our faculties
should be so enhanced in a future life as to enable us to perceive
and trace the ineffaceable consequences of our idle words and evil
deeds, and render our remorse and grief as eternal as those
consequences themselves? No more fearful punishment to a superior
intelligence can be conceived, than to see still in action, with the
consciousness that it must continue in action forever, a cause of
wrong put in motion by itself ages before.

Masonry, by its
teachings, endeavours to restrain men from the commission of
injustice and acts of wrong and outrage. Though it does not
endeavour to usurp the place of religion, still its code of morals
proceeds upon other principles than the municipal law; and it
condemns and punishes offences which neither that law punishes nor
public opinion condemns. In the Masonic law, to cheat and overreach
in trade, at the bar, in politics, are deemed no more venial than
theft; nor a deliberate lie than perjury; nor slander than robbery;
nor seduction than murder.

Especially it condemns those
wrongs of which the doer induces another to partake. He may repent;
he may, after agonizing struggles, regain the path of virtue; his
spirit may reachieve its purity through much anguish, after many
strifes; but the weaker fellow-creature whom he led astray, whom he
made a sharer in his guilt, but whom he cannot make a sharer in his
repentance and amendment, whose downward course (the first step of
which he taught) he cannot check, but is compelled to witness,--
what forgiveness of sins can avail him there? There is his
perpetual, his inevitable punishment, which no repentance can
alleviate, and no mercy can remit.

Let us be just, also, in
judging of other men's motives. We know but little of the real
merits or demerits of any fellow creature. We can rarely say with
certainty that this man is more guilty than that, or even that this
man is very good or very wicked. Often the basest men leave behind
them excellent reputations. There is scarcely one of us who has not,
at some time in his life, been on the edge of the commission of a
crime. Every one of us can look back, and shuddering see the time
when our feet stood upon the slippery crags that overhung the abyss
of guilt; and when, if temptation had been a little more urgent, or
a little longer continued, if penury had pressed us a little harder,
or a little more wine had further disturbed our intellect, dethroned
our judgment, and aroused our passions, our feet would have slipped,
and we should have fallen, never to rise again.

We may be
able to say--"This man has lied, has pilfered, has forged, has
embezzled moneys intrusted to him; and that man has gone through
life with clean hands." But we cannot say that the former has not
struggled long, though unsuccessfully, against temptations under
which the second would have succumbed without an effort. We can say
which has the cleanest hands before man; but not which has the
cleanest soul before God. We may be able to say, this man has
committed adultery, and that man has been ever chaste; but we cannot
tell but that the innocence of one may have been due to the coldness
of his heart, to the absence of a motive, to the presence of a fear,
to the slight degree of the temptation; nor but that the fall of the
other may have been preceded by the most vehement self-contest,
caused by the most over-mastering frenzy, and atoned for by the most
hallowing repentance. Generosity as well as niggardliness may be a
mere yielding to native temperament; and in the eye of Heaven, a
long life of beneficence in one man may have cost less effort, and
may indicate less virtue and less sacrifice of interest, than a few
rare hidden acts of kindness wrung by duty out of the reluctant and
unsympathizing nature of the other. There may be more real merit,
more self-sacrificing effort, more of the noblest elements of moral
grandeur, in a life of failure, sin, and shame, than in a career, to
our eyes, of stainless integrity.

When we condemn or pity the
fallen, how do we know that, tempted like him, we should not have
fallen like him, as soon, and perhaps with less resistance ? How can
we know what we should do if we were out of employment, famine
crouching, gaunt, and hungry, on our fireless hearth, and our
children wailing for bread ? We fall not because we are not enough
tempted! He that hath fallen may be at heart as honest as we. How do
we know that our daughter, sister, wife, could resist the
abandonment, the desolation, the distress, the temptation, that
sacrificed the virtue of their poor abandoned sister of shame?
Perhaps they also have not fallen, because they have not been sorely
tempted! Wisely are we directed to pray that we may not be exposed
to temptation.

Human justice must be ever uncertain. How many
judicial murders have been committed through ignorance of the
phenomena of insanity ! How many men hung for murder who were no
more murderers at heart than the jury that tried and the judge that
sentenced them! It may well be doubted whether the administration of
human laws, in every country, is not one gigantic mass of injustice
and wrong. God seeth not as man seeth; and the most abandoned
criminal, black as he is before the world, may yet have continued to
keep some little light burning in a corner of his soul, which would
long since have gone out in that of those who walk proudly in the
sunshine of immaculate fame, if they had been tried and tempted like
the poor outcast.

We do not know even the outside life of
men. We are not competent to pronounce even on their deeds. We do
not know half the acts of wickedness or virtue, even of our most
immediate fellows. We cannot say, with certainty, even of our
nearest friend, that he has not committed a particular sin, and
broken a particular commandment. Let each man ask his own heart ! Of
how many of our best and of our worst acts and qualities are our
most intimate associates utterly unconscious ! How many virtues does
not the world give us credit for, that we do not possess; or vices
condemn us for, of which we are not the slaves ! It is but a small
portion of our evil deeds and thoughts that ever comes to light; and
of our few redeeming goodnesses, the largest portion is known to God
alone.

We shall, therefore, be just in judging of other men,
only when we are charitable; and we should assume the prerogative of
judging others only when the duty is forced upon us; since we are so
almost certain to err, and the consequences of error are so serious.
No man need covet the office of judge; for in assuming it he assumes
the gravest and most oppressive responsibility. Yet you have assumed
it; we all assume it; for man is ever ready to judge, and ever ready
to condemn his neighbour, while upon the same state of case he
acquits himself See, therefore, that you exercise your once
cautiously and charitably, lest, in passing judgment upon the
criminal, you commit a greater wrong than that for which you condemn
him, and the consequences of which must be eternal.

The
faults and crimes and follies of other men are not unimportant to
us; but form a part of our moral discipline. War and bloodshed at a
distance, and frauds which do not affect our pecuniary interest, yet
touch us in our feelings, and concern our moral welfare. They have
much to do with all thoughtful hearts. The public eye may look
unconcernedly on the miserable victim of vice, and that shattered
wreck of a man may move the multitude to laughter or to scorn. But
to the Mason, it is the form of sacred humanity that is before him;
it is an erring fellow-being; a desolate, forlorn, forsaken soul;
and his thoughts, enfolding the poor wretch, will be far deeper than
those of indifference, ridicule, or contempt. All human offences,
the whole system of dishonesty, evasion, circumventing, forbidden
indulgence, and intriguing ambition, in which men are struggling
with each other, will be looked upon by a thoughtful Mason, not
merely as a scene of mean toils and strifes, but as the solemn
conflicts of immortal minds, for ends vast and momentous as their
own being. It is a sad and unworthy strife, and may well be viewed
with indignation; but that indignation must melt into pity. For the
stakes for which these gamesters play are not those which they
imagine, not those which are in sight. For example, this man plays
for a petty once, and gains it; but the real stake he gains is
sycophancy, uncharitableness, slander, and deceit.

Good men
are too proud of their goodness. They are respectable; dishonour
comes not near them; their countenance has weight and influence;
their robes are unstained; the poisonous breath of calumny as never
been breathed upon their fair name. How easy it is for them to look
down with scorn upon the poor degraded offender; to pass him by with
a lofty step; to draw up the folds of their garment around them,
that they may not be soiled by his touch ! Yet the Great Master of
Virtue did not so; but descended to familiar intercourse with
publicans and sinners, with the Samaritan woman, with the outcasts
and the Pariahs of the Hebrew world.

Many men think
themselves better, in proportion as they can detect sin in others!
When they go over the catalogue of their neighbour's unhappy
derelictions of temper or conduct, they often, amidst much apparent
concern, feel a secret exultation, that destroys all their own
pretensions to wisdom and moderation, and even to virtue. Many even
take actual pleasure in the sins of others; and this is the case
with every one whose thoughts are often employed in agreeable
comparisons of his own virtues with his neighbours'
faults.

The power of gentleness is too little seen in the
world; the subduing influences of pity, the might of love, the
control of mildness over passion, the commanding majesty of that
perfect character which mingles grave displeasure with grief and
pity for the offender. So it is that a Mason should treat his
brethren who go astray. Not with bitterness; nor yet with
good-natured easiness, nor with worldly indifference, nor with the
philosophic coldness, nor with a laxity of conscience, that accounts
everything well, that passes under the seal of public opinion; but
with charity, with pitying loving-kindness.

The human heart
will not bow willingly to what is infirm and wrong in human nature.
If it yields to us, it must yield to what is divine in us. The
wickedness of my neighbour cannot submit to my wickedness; his
sensuality, for instance, to my anger against his vices. My faults
are not the instruments that are to arrest his faults. And therefore
impatient reformers, and denouncing preachers, and hasty reprovers,
and angry parents, and irritable relatives generally fail, in their
several departments, to reclaim the erring.

A moral offence
is sickness, pain, loss, dishonour, in the immortal part of man. It
is guilt, and misery added to guilt. It is itself calamity; and
brings upon itself, in addition, the calamity of God's disapproval,
the abhorrence of all virtuous men, and the soul's own abhorrence.
Deal faithfully, but patiently and tenderly, with this evil ! It is
no matter for petty provocation, nor for personal strife, nor for
selfish irritation.

Speak kindly to your erring brother ! God
pities him: Christ has died for him: Providence waits for him:
Heaven's mercy yearns toward him; and Heaven's spirits are ready to
welcome him back with joy. Let your voice be in unison with all
those powers that God is using for his recovery!

If one
defrauds you, and exults at it, he is the most to be pitied of human
beings. He has done himself a far deeper injury than he has done
you. It is he, and not you, whom God regards with mingled
displeasure and compassion; and His judgment should be your law.
Among all the benedictions of the Holy Mount there is not one for
this man; but for the merciful, the peacemakers, and the persecuted
they are poured out freely.

We are all men of like passions,
propensities, and exposures. There are elements in us all, which
might have been perverted, through the successive processes of moral
deterioration, to the worst of crimes. The wretch whom the
execration of the thronging crowd pursues to the scaffold, is not
worse than any one of that multitude might have become under similar
circumstances. He is to be condemned indeed, but also deeply to be
pitied.

It does not become the frail and sinful to be
vindictive toward even the worst criminals. We owe much to the good
Providence of God, ordaining for us a lot more favourable to virtue.
We all had that within us, that might have been pushed to the same
excess: Perhaps we should have fallen as he did, with less
temptation. Perhaps we have done acts, that, in proportion to the
temptation or provocation, were less excusable than his great crime.
Silent pity and sorrow for the victim should mingle with our
detestation of the guilt. Even the pirate who murders in cold blood
on the high seas, is such a man as you or I might have been.
Orphanage in childhood, or base and dissolute and abandoned parents;
an unfriended youth; evil companions; ignorance and want of moral
cultivation; the temptations of sinful pleasure or grinding poverty;
familiarity with vice; a scorned and blighted name; seared and
crushed affections; desperate fortunes; these are steps that might
have led any one among us to unfurl upon the high seas the bloody
flag of universal defiance; to wage war with our kind; to live the
life and die the death of the reckless and remorseless free-booter.
Many affecting relationships of humanity plead with us to pity him.
His head once rested on a mother's bosom. He was once the object of
sisterly love and domestic endearment. Perhaps his hand, since often
red with blood, once clasped another little loving hand at the
altar. Pity him then; his blighted hopes and his crushed heart! It
is proper that frail and erring creatures like us should do so;
should feel the crime, but feel it as weak, tempted, and rescued
creatures should. It may be that when God weighs men's crimes, He
will take into consideration the temptations and the adverse
circumstances that led to them, and the opportunities for moral
culture of the offender; and it may be that our own offences will
weigh heavier than we think, and the murderer's lighter than
according to man's judgment.

On all accounts, therefore, let
the true Mason never forget the solemn injunction, necessary to be
observed at almost every moment of a busy life: 'JUDGE NOT, LEST YOU
YOURSELVES BE JUDGED FOR WHATSOEVER JUDGMENT YOU MEASURE UNTO
OTHERS, THE SAME SHALL IN TURN BE MEASURED UNTO YOU. Such is the
lesson taught the Provost and Judge.of man.

VIII. INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING.

IN
this Degree you have been taught the important lesson, that none are
entitled to advance in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, who
have not by study and application made themselves familiar with
Masonic learning and jurisprudence. The Degrees of this Rite are not
for those who are content with the mere work and ceremonies, and do
not seek to explore the mines of wisdom that lie buried beneath the
surface. You still advance toward the Light, toward that star,
blazing in the distance, which is an emblem of the Divine Truth,
given by God to the first men, and preserved amid all the
vicissitudes of ages in the traditions and teachings of Masonry. How
far you will advance, depends upon yourself alone. Here, as
everywhere in the world, Darkness struggles with Light, and clouds
and shadows intervene between you and the Truth.

When you
shall have become imbued with the morality of Masonry, with which
you yet are, and for some time will be exclusively occupied,--when
you shall have learned to practice all the virtues which it
inculcates; when they become familiar to you as your Household Gods;
then will you be prepared to receive its lofty philosophical
instruction, and to scale the heights upon whose summit Light and
Truth sit enthroned. Step by step men must advance toward
Perfection; and each Masonic Degree is meant to be one of those
steps. Each is a development of a particular duty; and in the
present you are taught charity and benevolence; to be to your
brethren an example of virtue; to correct your own faults; and to
endeavour to correct those of your brethren.

Here, as in all
the degrees, you meet with the emblems and the names of Deity, the
true knowledge of whose character and attributes it has ever been a
chief object of Masonry to perpetuate. To appreciate His infinite
greatness and goodness, to rely implicitly upon His Providence, to
revere and venerate Him as the Supreme Architect, Creator, and
Legislator of the universe, is the first of Masonic
duties.

The Battery of this Degree, and the five circuits
which you made around the Lodge, allude to the five points of
fellowship, and are intended to recall them vividly to your mind. To
go upon a brother's errand or to his relief, even barefoot and upon
flinty ground; to remember him in your supplications to the Deity;
to clasp him to your heart, and protect him against malice and evil
speaking; to uphold him when about to stumble and fall; and to give
him prudent, honest, and friendly counsel, are duties plainly
written upon the pages of God's great code of law, and first among
the ordinances of Masonry.

The first sign of the Degree is
expressive of the diffidence and humility with which we inquire into
the nature and attributes of the Deity; the second, of the profound
awe and reverence with which we contemplate His glories; and the
third, of the sorrow with which we reflect upon our insufficient
observance of our duties, and our imperfect compliance with His
statutes.

The distinguishing property of man is to search for
and follow after truth. Therefore, when relaxed from our necessary
cares and concerns, we then covet to see, to hear, and to learn
somewhat; and we esteem knowledge of things, either obscure or
wonderful, to be the indispensable means of living happily. Truth,
Simplicity, and Candor are most agreeable to the nature of mankind.
Whatever is virtuous consists either in Sagacity, and the perception
of Truth; or in the preservation of Human Society, by giving to
every man his due, and observing the faith of contracts; or in the
greatness and firmness of an elevated and unsubdued mind; or in
observing order and regularity in all our words and in all our
actions; in which consist Moderation and Temperance.

Masonry
has in all times religiously preserved that enlightened faith from
which flow sublime Devotedness, the sentiment of Fraternity fruitful
of good works, the spirit of indulgence and peace, of sweet hopes
and effectual consolations; and inflexibility in the accomplishment
of the most painful and arduous duties. It has always propagated it
with ardor and perseverance; and therefore it labours at the present
day more zealously than ever. Scarcely a Masonic discourse is
pronounced, that does not demonstrate the necessity and advantages
of this faith, and especially recall the two constitutive principles
of religion, that make all religion,-- love of God, and love of
neighbour. Masons carry these principles into the bosoms of their
families and of society. While the Sectarians of former times
enfeebled the religious spirit, Masonry, forming one great People
over the whole globe, and marching under the great banner of Charity
and Benevolence, preserves that religious feeling, strengthens it,
extends it in its purity and simplicity, as it has always existed in
the depths of the human heart, as it existed even under the dominion
of the most ancient forms of worship, but where gross and debasing
superstitions forbade its recognition.

A Masonic Lodge should
resemble a bee-hive, in which all the members work together with
ardor for the common good. Masonry is not made for cold souls and
narrow minds, that do not comprehend its lofty mission and sublime
apostolate. Here the anathema against lukewarm souls applies. To
comfort misfortunes to popularize knowledge, to teach whatever is
true and pure in religion and philosophy, to accustom men to respect
order and the proprieties of life, to point out the way to genuine
happiness, to prepare for that fortunate period, when all the
factions of the Human Family, united by the bonds of Toleration and
Fraternity, shall be but one household,--these are labours that may
well excite zeal and even enthusiasm.

We do not now enlarge
upon or elaborate these ideas. We but utter them to you briefly, as
hints, upon which you may at your leisure reflect. Hereafter, if you
continue to advance, they will be unfolded, explained, and
developed.

Masonry utters no impracticable and extravagant
precepts, certain, because they are so, to be disregarded. It asks
of its initiates nothing that it is not possible and even easy for
them to perform. Its teachings are eminently practical; and its
statutes can be obeyed by every just, upright, and honest man, no
matter what his faith or creed. Its object is to attain the greatest
practical good, without seeking to make men perfect. It does not
meddle with the domain of religion, nor inquire into the mysteries
of regeneration. It teaches those truths that are written by the
finger of God upon the heart of man, those views of duty which have
been brought out by the meditations of the studious, confirmed by
the allegiance of the good and wise, and stamped as sterling by the
response they find in every uncorrupted mind. It does not dogmatize,
nor vainly imagine dogmatic certainty to be
attainable.

Masonry does not occupy itself with crying down
this world, with its splendid beauty, its thrilling interests, its
glorious works, its noble and holy affections; nor exhort us to
detach our hearts from this earthly life, as empty, fleeting, and
unworthy, and fix them upon Heaven, as the only sphere deserving the
love of the loving or the meditation of the wise. It teaches that
man has high duties to perform, and a high destiny to fulfill, on
this earth; that this world is not merely the portal to another; and
that this life, though not our only one, is an integral one, and the
particular one with which we are here meant to be concerned; that
the Present is our scene of action, and the Future for speculation
and for trust; that man was sent upon the earth to live in it, to
enjoy it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it, to make the most
of it. It is his country, on which he should lavish his affections
and his efforts. It is here his influences are to operate. It is his
house, and not a tent; his home, and not merely a school. He is sent
into this world, not to be constantly hankering after, dreaming of,
preparing for another; but to do his duty and fulfill his destiny on
this earth; to do all that lies in his power to improve it, to
render it a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around
him, to those who are to come after him. His life here is part of
his immortality; and this world, also, is among the
stars.

And thus, Masonry teaches us, will man best prepare
for that Future which he hopes for. The Unseen cannot hold a higher
place in our affections than the Seen and the Familiar. The law of
our being is Love of Life, and its interests and adornments; love of
the world in which our lot is cast, engrossment with the interests
and affections of earth. Not a low or sensual love, not love of
wealth, of fame, of ease, of power, of splendour. Not low
worldliness; but the love of Earth as the garden on which the
Creator has lavished such miracles of beauty; as the habitation of
humanity, the arena of its conflicts, the scene of its illimitable
progress, the dwelling-place of the wise, the good, the active, the
loving, and the dear; the place of opportunity for the development
by means of sin and suffering and sorrow, of the noblest passions
the loftiest virtues, and the tenderest sympathies.

They take
very unprofitable pains, who endeavour to persuade men that they are
obliged wholly to despise this world, and all that is in it, even
whilst they themselves live here. God hath not taken all that pains
in forming and framing and furnishing and adorning the world, that
they who were made by Him to live in it should despise it. It will
be enough, if they do not love it too immoderately. It is useless to
attempt to extinguish all those affections and passions which are
and always will be inseparable from human nature. As long as he
world lasts, and honour and virtue and industry have reputation in
the world, there will be ambition and emulation and appetite in the
best and most accomplished men in it; and if there were not, more
barbarity and vice and wickedness would cover every nation of the
world, than it now suffers under.

Those only who feel a deep
interest in, and affection for, this world, will work resolutely for
its amelioration. Those who undervalue this rife, naturally become
querulous and discontented, and lose their interest in the welfare
of their fellows. To serve them, and so to do our duty as Masons, we
must feel that the object is worth the exertion; and be content with
this world in which God has placed us, until He permits us to remove
to a better one. He is here with us, and does not deem this an
unworthy world.

It a serious thing to defame and belie a
whole world; to speak of it as the abode of a poor, toiling,
drudging, ignorant, contemptible race. You would not so discredit
your family, your friendly circle, your village, your city, your
country. The world is not a wretched and a worthless one; nor is it
a misfortune, but a thing to be thankful for, to be a man. If life
is worthless, so also is immortality.

In society itself, in
that living mechanism of human relationships that spreads itself
over the world, there is a finer essence within, that as truly moves
it, as any power, heavy or expansive, moves the sounding manufactory
or the swift-flying car. The man-machine hurries to and fro upon the
earth, stretches out its hands on every side, to toil, to barter, to
unnumbered labours and enterprises; and almost always the motive,
that which moves it, is something that takes hold of the comforts,
affections, and hopes of social existence. True, the mechanism often
works with difficulty, drags heavily, grates and screams with harsh
collision. True, the essence of finer motive, becoming intermixed
with baser and coarser ingredients, often clogs, obstructs, jars,
and deranges the free and noble action of social life. But he is
neither grateful nor wise, who looks cynically on all this, and
loses the fine sense of social good in its perversions. That I can
be a friend, that I can have a friend, though it were but one in the
world; that fact, that wondrous good fortune, we may set against all
the sufferings of our social nature. That there is such a place on
earth as a home, that resort and sanctuary of in-walled and shielded
joy, we may set against all the surrounding desolations of life.
That one can be a true, social man, can speak his true thoughts,
amidst all the Tanglings of controversy and the warring of opinions;
that fact from within, outweighs all facts from without.

In
the visible aspect and action of society, often repulsive and
annoying, we are apt to lose the due sense of its invisible
blessings. As in Nature it is not the coarse and palpable, not soils
and rains, nor even fields and flowers, that are so beautiful, as
the invisible spirit of wisdom and beauty that pervades it; so in
society, it is the invisible, and therefore unobserved, that is most
beautiful.

What nerves the arm of toil? If man minded himself
alone, he would fling down the spade and axe, and rush to the
desert; or roam through the world as a wilderness, and make that
world a desert. His home, which he sees not, perhaps, but once or
twice in a day, is the invisible bond of the world. It is the good,
strong, and noble faith that men have in each other, which gives the
loftiest character to business, trade, and commerce. Fraud occurs in
the rush of business; but it is the exception. Honesty is the rule;
and all the frauds in the world cannot tear the great bond of human
confidence. If they could, commerce would furl its sails on every
sea, and all the cities of the world would crumble into ruins. The
bare character of a man on the other side of the world, whom you
never saw, whom you never will see, you hold good for a bond of
thousands. The most striking feature of the political state is not
governments, nor constitutions, nor laws, nor enactments, nor the
judicial power, nor the police; but the universal will of the people
to be governed by the common weal. Take off that restraint, and no
government on earth could stand for an hour.

Of the many
teachings of Masonry, one of the most valuable is, that we should
not depreciate this life. It does not hold, that when we reflect on
the destiny that awaits man on earth, we ought to bedew his cradle
with our tears; but, like the Hebrews, it hails the birth of a child
with joy, and holds that his birthday should be a
festival.

It has no sympathy with those who profess to have
proved this life, and found it little worth; who have deliberately
made up their minds that it is far more miserable than happy;
because its employments are tedious, and their schemes often
baffled, their friendships broken, or their friends dead, its
pleasures palled, and its honours faded, and its paths beaten,
familiar, and dull.

Masonry deems it no mark of great piety
toward God to disparage, if not despise, the state that He has
ordained for us. It does not absurdly set up the claims of another
world, not in comparison merely, but in competition, with the claims
of this. It looks upon both as parts of one system. It holds that a
man may make the best of this world and of another at the same time.
It does not teach its initiates to think better of other works and
dispensations of God, by thinking meanly of these. It does not look
upon life as so much time lost; nor regard its employments as
trifles unworthy of immortal beings; nor tell its followers to fold
their arms, as if in disdain of their state and species; but it
looks soberly and cheerfully upon the world, as a theatre of worthy
action, of exalted usefulness, and of rational and innocent
enjoyment.

It holds that, with all its evils, life is a
blessing. To deny that is to destroy the basis of all religion,
natural and revealed. The very foundation of all religion is laid on
the firm belief that God is good; and if this life is an evil and a
curse, no such belief can be rationally entertained. To level our
satire at humanity and human existence, as mean and contemptible; to
look on this world as the habitation of a miserable race, fit only
for mockery and scorn; to consider this earth as a dungeon or a
prison, which has no blessing to offer but escape from it, is to
extinguish the primal light of faith and hope and happiness, to
destroy the basis of religion, and Truth's foundation in the
goodness of God. If it indeed be so, then it matters not what else
is true or not true; speculation is vain and faith is vain; and all
that belongs to man's highest being is buried in the ruins of
misanthropy, melancholy, and despair.

Our love of life; the
tenacity with which, in sorrow and suffering, we cling to it; our
attachment to our home, to the spot that gave us birth, to any
place, however rude, unsightly, or barren, on which the history of
our years has been written, all show how dear are the ties of
kindred and society. Misery makes a greater impression upon us than
happiness; because the former is not the habit of our minds. It is a
strange, unusual guest, and we are more conscious of its presence.
Happiness lives with us, and we forget it. It does not excite us,
nor disturb the order and course of our thoughts. A great agony is
an epoch in our life. We remember our afflictions, as we do the
storm and earthquake, because they are out of the common course of
things. They are like disastrous events, recorded because
extraordinary; and with whole and unnoticed periods of prosperity
between. We mark and signalize the times of calamity; but many happy
days and unnoted periods of enjoyment pass, that are unrecorded
either in the book of memory, or in the scanty annals of our
thanksgiving. We are little disposed and less able to call up from
the dim remembrances of our past years, the peaceful moments, the
easy sensations, the bright thoughts, the quiet reveries, the
throngs of kind affections in which life flowed on, bearing us
almost unconsciously upon its bosom, because it bore us calmly and
gently.

Life is not only good; but it has been glorious in
the experience of millions. The glory of all human virtue clothes
it. The splendours of devotedness, beneficence, and heroism are upon
it; the crown of a thousand martyrdoms is upon its brow. The
brightness of the soul shines through this visible and sometimes
darkened life; through all its surrounding cares and labours. The
humblest life may feel its connection with its Infinite Source.
There is something mighty in the frail inner man; something of
immortality in this momentary and transient being. The mind
stretches away, on every side, into infinity. Its thoughts flash
abroad, far into the boundless, the immeasurable, the infinite; far
into the great, dark, teeming future; and become powers and
influences in other ages. To know its wonderful Author, to bring
down wisdom from the Eternal Stars, to bear upward its homage,
gratitude, and love, to the Ruler of all worlds, to be immortal in
our influences projected far into the slow-approaching Future, makes
life most worthy and most glorious.

Life is the wonderful
creation of God. It is light, sprung from void darkness; power,
waked from inertness and impotence; being created from nothing; and
the contrast may well enkindle wonder and delight. It is a rill from
the infinite, overflowing goodness; and from the moment when it
first gushes up into the light, to that when it mingles with the
ocean of Eternity, that Goodness attends it and ministers to it. It
is a great and glorious gift. There is gladness in its infant
voices; joy in the buoyant step of its youth; deep satisfaction in
its strong maturity; and peace in its quiet age. There is good for
the good; virtue for the faithful; and victory for the valiant.
There is, even in this humble life, an infinity for those whose
desires are boundless. There are blessings upon its birth; there is
hope in its death; and eternity in its prospect. Thus earth, which
binds many in chains, is to the Mason both the starting-place and
goal of immortality, Many it buries in the rubbish of dull cares and
wearying vanities; but to the Mason it is the lofty mount of
meditation, where Heaven, and Infinity and Eternity are spread
before him and around him. To the lofty-minded, the pure, and the
virtuous, this life is the beginning of Heaven, and a part of
immortality.

God hath appointed one remedy for all the evils
in the world; and that is a contented spirit. We may be reconciled
to poverty and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and
equanimity to make the proportions. No man is poor who doth not
think himself so; but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he
desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition.
This virtue of contentedness was the sum of all the old moral
philosophy, and is of most universal use in the whole course of our
lives, and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the world and
the enmities of sad chances. It is the great reasonableness of
complying with the Divine Providence, which governs all the world,
and hath so ordered us in the administration of His great family. It
is fit that God should dispense His gifts as He pleases; and if we
murmur here, we may, at the next melancholy, be troubled that He did
not make us to be angels or stars.

We ourselves make our
fortunes good or bad; and when God lets loose a Tyrant upon us, or a
sickness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or
know not how to be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the
calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble
principle, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and
think impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be the
greatest disgrace as well as the greatest folly, and poverty far
preferable to the torments of avarice, we may still bear an even
mind and smile at the reverses of fortune and the ill-nature of
Fate.

If thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy
constancy; and if thou must die sooner than others, or than thou
didst expect, yet do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to
him who is content, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it be
unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave, unless
that other hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to
pleasure or pain, to hope or fear; command these passions, and you
are freer than the Parthian Kings.

When an enemy reproaches
us, let us look on him as an impartial relator of our faults; for he
will tell us truer than our fondest friend will, and we may forgive
his anger, whilst we make use of the plainness of his declamation.
The ox, when he is weary, treads truest; and if there be nothing
else in abuse, but that it makes us to walk warily, and tread sure
for fear of our enemies, that is better than to be flattered into
pride and carelessness.

If thou fallest from thy employment
in public, take sanctuary in an honest retirement, being indifferent
to thy gain abroad, or thy safety at home. When the north wind blows
hard, and it rains sadly, we do not sit down in it and cry; but
defend ourselves against it with a warm garment, or a good fire and
a dry roof. So when the storm of a sad mischance beats upon our
spirits, we may turn it into something that is good, if we resolve
to make it so; and with equanimity and patience may shelter
ourselves from its inclement pitiless pelting. If it develop our
patience, and give occasion for heroic endurance, it hath done us
good enough to recompense us sufficiently for all the temporal
affliction; for so a wise man shall overrule his stars; and have a
greater influence upon his own content, than all the constellations
and planets of the firmament.

Compare not thy condition with
the few above thee, but to secure thy content, look upon those
thousands with whom thou wouldst not, for any interest, change thy
fortune and condition. A soldier must not think himself
unprosperous, if he be not successful as Alexander or Wellington;
nor any man deem himself unfortunate that he hath not the wealth of
Rothschild; but rather let the former rejoice that he is not
lessened like the many generals who went down horse and man before
Napoleon, and the latter that he is not the beggar who, bareheaded
in the bleak winter wind holds out his tattered hat for charity.
There may be many who are richer and more fortunate; but many
thousands who are very miserable, compared to thee.

After the
worst assaults of Fortune, there will be something left to us,--a
merry countenance, a cheerful spirit, and a good conscience, the
Providence of God, our hopes of Heaven, our charity for those who
have injured us; perhaps a loving wife, and many friends to pity,
and some to relieve us; and light and air, and all the beauties of
Nature; we can read, discourse, and meditate; and having still these
blessings, we should be much in love with sorrow and peevishness to
lose them all, and prefer to sit down on our little handful of
thorns.

Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them,
and the evils of it bear patiently and calmly; for this day only is
ours: we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the
morrow. When our fortunes are violently changed, our spirits are
unchanged, if they always stood in the suburbs and expectation of
sorrows and reverses. The blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty,
and integrity deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life. We are quit
from a thousand calamities, every one of which, if it were upon us,
would make us insensible of our present sorrow, and glad to receive
it in exchange for that other greater affliction.

Measure
your desires by your fortune and condition, not your fortunes by
your desires: be governed by your needs, not by your fancy; by
nature, not by evil customs and ambitious principles. It is no evil
to be poor, but to be vicious and impatient. Is that beast better,
that hath two or three mountains to graze on, than the little bee
that feeds on dew or manna, and lives upon what falls every morning
from the store-houses of Heaven, clouds and Providence
?

There are some instances of fortune and a fair condition
that cannot stand with some others; but if you desire this, you must
lose that, and unless you be content with one, you lose the comfort
of both. If you covet learning, you must have leisure and a retired
life; if honours of State and political distinctions, you must be
ever abroad in public, and get experience, and do all men's
business, and keep all company, and have no leisure at all. If you
will be rich, you must be frugal; if you will be popular, you must
be bountiful; if a philosopher, you must despise riches. If you
would be famous as Epaminondas, accept also his poverty, for it
added lustre to his person, and envy to his fortune, and his virtue
without it could not have been so excellent. If you would have the
reputation of a martyr, you must needs accept his persecution; if of
a benefactor of the world, the world's injustice; if truly great,
you must expect to see the mob prefer lesser men to
yourself.

God esteems it one of His glories, that He brings
good out of evil; and therefore it were but reason we should trust
Him to govern His own world as He pleases; and that we should
patiently wait until the change cometh, or the reason is
discovered.

A Mason's contentedness must by no means be a
mere contented selfishness, like his who, comfortable himself, is
indifferent to the discomfort of others. There will always be in
this world wrongs to forgive, suffering to alleviate, sorrow asking
for sympathy, necessities and destitution to relieve, and ample
occasion for the exercise of active charity and beneficence. And he
who sits unconcerned amidst it all, perhaps enjoying his own
comforts and luxuries the more, by contrasting them with the hungry
and ragged destitution and shivering misery of his fellows, is not
contented, but selfish and unfeeling.

It is the saddest of
all sights upon this earth, that of a man lazy and luxurious, or
hard and penurious, to whom want appeals in vain, and suffering
cries in an unknown tongue. The man whose hasty anger hurries him
into violence and crime is not half so unworthy to live. He is the
faithless steward, that embezzles what God has given him in trust
for the impoverished and suffering among his brethren. The true
Mason must be and must have a right to be content with himself; and
he can be so only when he lives not for himself alone, but for
others also, who need his assistance and have a claim upon his
sympathy.

"Charity is the great channel," it has been well
said, "through which God passes all His mercy upon mankind. For we
receive absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our
brother. This is the rule of our hopes and the measure of our desire
in this world; and on the day of death and judgment, the great
sentence upon mankind shall be transacted according to our alms,
which is the other part of charity. God himself is love; and very
degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the
divine nature."

These principles Masonry reduces to practice.
By them it expects you to be hereafter guided and governed. It
especially inculcates them upon him who employs the labour of
others, forbidding him to discharge them, when to want employment is
to starve; or to contract for the labour of man or woman at so low a
price that by over-exertion they must sell him their blood and life
at the same time with the labour of their hands.

These
Degrees are also intended to teach more than morals. The symbols and
ceremonies of Masonry have more than one meaning. They rather
conceal than disclose the Truth. They hint it only, at least; and
their varied meanings are only to be discovered by reflection and
study. Truth is not only symbolized by Light, but as the ray of
light is separable into rays of different colours, so is truth
separable into kinds. It is the province of Masonry to teach all
truths--not moral truth alone, but political and philosophical, and
even religious truth, so far as concerns the great and essential
principles of each. The sphynx was a symbol. To whom has it
disclosed its inmost meaning? Who knows the symbolic meaning of the
pyramids?

You will hereafter learn who are the chief foes of
human liberty symbolized by the assassins of the Master Khurum; and
in their fate you may see foreshadowed that which we earnestly hope
will hereafter overtake those enemies of humanity, against whom
Masonry has struggled so long.

IX. ELECT OF THE NINE.[Elu of the
Nine.]

ORIGINALLY created to reward fidelity, obedience, and
devotion, this Degree was consecrated to bravery, devotedness, and
patriotism; and your obligation has made known to you the duties
which you have assumed. They are summed up in the simple mandate,
"Protect the oppressed against the oppressor; and devote yourself to
the honour and interests of your Country."

Masonry is not
"speculative," nor theoretical, but experimental; not sentimental,
but practical. It requires self-renunciation and self-control. It
wears a stern face toward men's vices, and interferes with many of
our pursuits and our fancied pleasures. It penetrates beyond the
region of vague sentiment; beyond the regions where moralizers and
philosophers have woven their fine theories and elaborated their
beautiful maxims, to the very depths of the heart, rebuking our
littlenesses and meannesses, arraigning our prejudices and passions,
and warring against the armies of our vices.

It wars against
the passions that spring out of the bosom of a world of fine
sentiments, a world of admirable sayings and foul practices, of good
maxims and bad deeds; whose darker passions are not only restrained
by custom and ceremony, but hidden even from itself by a veil of
beautiful sentiments. This terrible solecism has existed in all
ages. Romish sentimentalism has often covered infidelity and vice;
Protestant straightness often lauds spirituality and faith, and
neglects homely truth, candor, and generosity; and ultra-liberal
Rationalistic refinement sometimes soars to heaven in its dreams,
and wallows in the mire of earth in its deeds.

There may be a
world of Masonic sentiment; and yet a world of little or no Masonry.
In many minds there is a vague and general sentiment of Masonic
charity, generosity, and disinterestedness, but no practical, active
virtue, nor habitual kindness, self sacrifice, or liberality.
Masonry plays about them like the cold though brilliant lights that
flush and eddy over Northern skies. There are occasional flashes of
generous and manly feeling, transitory splendours, and momentary
gleams of just and noble thought, and transient coruscations, that
light the Heaven of their imagination; but there is no vital warmth
in the heart; and it remains as cold and sterile as the Arctic or
Antarctic regions. They do nothing; they gain no victories over
themselves; they make no progress; they are still in the Northeast
corner of the Lodge, as when they first stood there as Apprentices;
and they do not cultivate Masonry, with a cultivation, determined,
resolute, and regular, like their cultivation of their estate,
profession, or knowledge. Their Masonry takes its chance in general
and inefficient sentiment, mournfully barren of results; in words
and formulas and fine professions.

Most men have sentiments,
but not principles. The former are temporary sensations, the latter
permanent and controlling impressions of goodness and virtue. The
former are general and involuntary, and do not rise to the character
of virtue. Every one feels them. They flash up spontaneously in
every heart. The latter are rules of action, and shape and control
our conduct; and it is these that Masonry insists upon.

We
approve the right; but pursue the wrong. It is the old story of
human deficiency. No one abets or praises injustice, fraud,
oppression, covetousness, revenge, envy or slander; and yet how many
who condemn these things, are themselves guilty of them. It is no
rare thing for him whose indignation is kindled at a tale of wicked
injustice, cruel oppression base slander, or misery inflicted by
unbridled indulgence; whose anger flames in behalf of the injured
and ruined victims of wrong; to be in some relation unjust, or
oppressive, or envious, or self-indulgent, or a careless talker of
others. How wonderfully indignant the penurious man often is, at the
avarice or want of public spirit of another!

A great Preacher
well said, "Therefore thou art inexcusable. O Man, whosoever thou
art, that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest
thyself: for thou that judgest, doest the same things." It is
amazing to see how men can talk of virtue and honour, whose life
denies both. It is curious to see with what a marvellous facility
many bad men quote Scripture. It seems to comfort their evil
consciences, to use good words; and to gloze over bad deeds with
holy texts, wrested to their purpose. Often, the more a man talks
about Charity and Toleration, the less he has of either; the more he
talks about Virtue, the smaller stock he has of it. The mouth speaks
out of the abundance of the heart; but often the very reverse of
what the man practises. And the vicious and sensual often express,
and in a sense feel, strong disgust at vice and sensuality.
Hypocrisy is not so common as is imagined.

Here, in the
Lodge, virtue and vice are matters of reflection and feeling only.
There is little opportunity here, for the practice of either; and
Masons yield to the argument here, with facility and readiness;
because nothing is to follow. It is easy, and safe, here, too feel
upon these matters. But to-morrow, when they breathe the atmosphere
of worldly gains and competitions, and the passions are again
stirred at the opportunities of unlawful pleasure, all their fine
emotions about virtue, all their generous abhorrence of selfishness
and sensuality, melt away like a morning cloud.

For the time,
their emotions and sentiments are sincere and real. Men may be
really, in a certain way, interested in Masonry, while fatally
deficient in virtue. It is not always hypocrisy. Men pray most
fervently and sincerely, and yet are constantly guilty of acts so
bad and base, so ungenerous and unrighteous, that the crimes that
crowd the dockets of our courts are scarcely worse.

A man may
be a good sort of man in general, and yet a very bad man in
particular: good in the Lodge and bad in the world; good in public,
and bad in his family; good at home, and bad on a journey or in a
strange city. Many a man earnestly desires to be a good Mason. He
says so, and is sincere. But if you require him to resist a certain
passion, to sacrifice a certain indulgence, to control his appetite
at a particular feast, or to keep his temper in a dispute, you will
find that he does not wish to be a good Mason, in that particular
case; or, wishing, is not able to resist his worst
impulses.

The duties of life are more than life. The
law imposeth it upon every citizen, that he prefer the urgent
service of his country before the safety of his life. If a man be
commanded, saith a great writer, to bring ordnance or munition to
relieve any of the King's towns that are distressed, then he cannot
for any danger of tempest justify the throwing of them overboard;
for there it holdeth which was spoken by the Roman, when the same
necessity of weather was alleged to hold him from embarking:
"Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam :" it needs that I go: it is not
necessary I should live.

How ungratefully he slinks away, who
dies, and does nothing to reflect a glory to Heaven ! How barren a
tree he is, who lives, and spreads, and cumbers the ground, yet
leaves not one seed, not one good work to generate another after him
! All cannot leave alike; yet all may leave something, answering
their proportions and their kinds. Those are dead and withered
grains of corn, out of which there will not one ear spring. He will
hardly find the way to Heaven, who desires to go thither
alone.

Industry is never wholly unfruitful. If it bring not
joy with the incoming profit, it will yet banish mischief from thy
busied gates. There is a kind of good angel waiting upon Diligence
that ever carries a laurel in his hand to crown her. How unworthy
was that man of the world who never did aught, but only lived and
died! That we have liberty to do anything, we should account it a
gift from the favouring Heavens; that we have minds sometimes
inclining us to use that liberty well, is a great bounty of the
Deity.

Masonry is action, and not inertness. It requires its
Initiates to WORK, actively and earnestly, for the benefit of their
brethren, their country, and mankind. It is the patron of the
oppressed, as it is the comforter and consoler of the unfortunate
and wretched. It seems to it a worthier honour to be the instrument
of advancement and reform, than to enjoy all that rank and office
and lofty titles can bestow. It is the advocate of the common people
in those things which concern the best interests of mankind. It
hates insolent power and impudent usurpation. It pities the poor,
the sorrowing, the disconsolate; it endeavours to raise and improve
the ignorant, the sunken, and the degraded.

Its fidelity to
its mission will be accurately evidenced, by the extent of the
efforts it employs, and the means it sets on foot, to improve the
people at large and to better their condition; chiefest of which,
within its reach, is to aid in the education of the children of the
poor. An intelligent people, informed of its rights, will soon come
to know its power, and cannot long be oppressed; but if there be not
a sound and virtuous populace, the elaborate ornaments at the top of
the pyramid of society will be a wretched compensation for the want
of solidity at the base. It is never safe for a nation to repose on
the lap of ignorance: and if there ever was a time when public
tranquillity was insured by the absence of knowledge, that season is
past. Unthinking stupidity cannot sleep, without being appalled by
phantoms and shaken by terrors. The improvement of the mass of the
people is the grand security for popular liberty; in the neglect of
which, the politeness, refinement, and knowledge accumulated in the
higher orders and wealthier classes will some day perish like dry
grass in the hot fire of popular fury.

It is not the mission
of Masonry to engage in plots and conspiracies against the civil
government. It is not the fanatical propagandist of any creed or
theory; nor does it proclaim itself the enemy of kings. It is the
apostle of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but it is no more the
high-priest of republicanism than of constitutional monarchy. It
contracts no entangling alliances with any sect of theorists,
dreamers, or philosophers. It does not know those as its Initiates
who assail the civil order and all lawful authority, at the same
time that they propose to deprive the dying of the consolations of
religion. It sits apart from all sects and creeds, in its own calm
and simple dignity, the same under every government. It is still
that which it was in the cradle of the human race, when no human
foot had trodden the soil of Assyria and Egypt, and no colonies had
crossed the Himalayas into Southern India, Media, or
Etruria.

It gives no countenance to anarchy and
licentiousness; and no illusion of glory, or extravagant emulation
of the ancients inflames it with an unnatural thirst for ideal and
Utopian liberty. It teaches that in rectitude of life and sobriety
of habits is the only sure guarantee for the continuance of
political freedom, and it is chiefly the soldier of the sanctity of
the laws and the rights of conscience.

It recognizes it as a
truth, that necessity, as well as abstract right and ideal justice,
must have its part in the making of laws, the administration of
affairs, and the regulation of relations in society. It sees,
indeed, that necessity rules in all the affairs of man. It knows
that where any man, or any number or race of men, are so imbecile of
intellect, so degraded, so incapable of self control, so inferior in
the scale of humanity, as to be unfit to be intrusted with the
highest prerogatives of citizenship, the great law of necessity, for
the peace and safety of the community and country, requires them to
remain under the control of those of larger intellect and superior
wisdom. It trusts and believes that God will, in his own good time,
work out his own great and wise purposes; and it is willing to wait,
where it does not see its own way clear to some certain
good.

It hopes and longs for the day when all the races of
men, even the lowest, will be elevated, and become fitted for
political freedom; when, like all other evils that afflict the
earth, pauperism, and bondage or abject dependence, shall cease and
disappear. But it does not preach revolution to those who are fond
of kings, nor rebellion that can end only in disaster and defeat, or
in substituting one tyrant for another, or a multitude of despots
for one.

Wherever a people is fit to be free and to govern
itself, and generously strives to be so, there go all its
sympathies. It detests the tyrant, the lawless oppressor, the
military usurper, and him who abuses a lawful power. It frowns upon
cruelty, and a wanton disregard of the rights of humanity. It abhors
the selfish employer, and exerts its influence to lighten the
burdens which want and dependence impose upon the workman, and to
foster that humanity and kindness which man owes to even the poorest
and most unfortunate brother.

It can never be employed, in
any country under Heaven, to teach a toleration for cruelty, to
weaken moral hatred for guilt, or to deprave and brutalize the human
mind. The dread of punishment will never make a Mason an accomplice
in so corrupting his countrymen, and a teacher of depravity and
barbarity. If anywhere, as has heretofore happened, a tyrant should
send a satirist on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a
libeller, in a court of justice, a Mason, if a juror in such a case,
though in sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of the
innocent, and within hearing of the clash of the bayonets meant to
overawe the court, would rescue the intrepid satirist from the
tyrant's fangs, and send his officers out from the court with defeat
and disgrace.

Even if all law and liberty were trampled under
the feet of Jacobinical demagogues or a military banditti, and great
crimes were perpetrated with a high hand against all who were
deservedly the objects of public veneration; if the people,
overthrowing law, roared like a sea around the courts of justice,
and demanded the blood of those who, during the temporary fit of
insanity and drunken delirium, had chanced to become odious to it,
for true words manfully spoken, or unpopular acts bravely done, the
Masonic juror, unawed alike by the single or the many-headed tyrant,
would consult the dictates of duty alone, and stand with a noble
firmness between the human tigers and their coveted prey.

The
Mason would much rather pass his life hidden in the recesses of the
deepest obscurity, feeding his mind even with the visions and
imaginations of good deeds and noble actions, than to be placed on
the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized with a denial
of the practice of all which can make the greatest situation any
other than the greatest curse. And if he has been enabled to lend
the slightest step to any great and laudable designs; if he has had
any share in any measure giving quiet to private property and to
private conscience, making lighter the yoke of poverty and
dependence, or relieving deserving men from oppression; if he has
aided in securing to his countrymen that best possession, peace; if
he has joined in reconciling the different sections of his own
country to each other, and the people to the government of their own
creating; and in teaching the citizen to look for his protection to
the laws of his country, and for his comfort to the good-will of his
countrymen; if he has thus taken his part with the best of men in
the best of their actions, he may well shut the book, even if he
might wish to read a page or two more. It is enough for his measure.
He has not lived in vain.

Masonry teaches that all power is
delegated for the good, and not for the injury of the People; and
that, when it is perverted from the original purpose, the compact is
broken, and the right ought to be resumed; that resistance to power
usurped is not merely a duty which man owes to himself and to his
neighbour, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and
maintaining the rank which He gave him in the creation. This
principle neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle nor the
enervation of refinement extinguish. It makes it base for a man to
suffer when he ought to act; and, tending to preserve to him the
original destinations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant
assumptions of tyrants and vindicates the independent quality of the
race of which we are a part.

The wise and well-informed Mason
will not fail to be the votary of Liberty and Justice. He will be
ready to exert himself in their defence, wherever they exist. It
cannot be a matter of indifference to him when, his own liberty and
that of other men, with whose merits and capacities he is
acquainted, are involved in the event of the struggle to be made;
but his attachment will be to the cause, as the cause of man; and
not merely to the country. Wherever there is a people that
understands the value of political justice, and is prepared to
assert it, that is his country; wherever he can most contribute to
the diffusion of these principles and the real happiness of mankind,
that is his country. Nor does he desire for any country any other
benefit than justice.

The true Mason identifies the honour of
his country with his own. Nothing more conduces to the beauty and
glory of one's country than the preservation against all enemies of
its civil and religious liberty. The world will never willingly let
die the names of those patriots who in her different ages have
received upon their own breasts the blows aimed by insolent enemies
at the bosom of their country.

But also it conduces, and in
no small measure, to the beauty and glory of one's country, that
justice should always be administered there to all alike, and
neither denied, sold, nor delayed to any one; that the interest of
the poor should be looked to, and none starve or be houseless, or
clamor in vain for work; that the child and the feeble woman should
not be overworked, or even the apprentice or slave be stinted of
food or overtasked or mercilessly scourged; and that God's great
laws of mercy, humanity, and compassion should be everywhere
enforced, not only by the statutes, but also by the power of public
opinion. And he who labours, often against reproach and obloquy, and
oftener against indifference and apathy, to bring about that
fortunate condition of things when that great code of divine law
shall be everywhere and punctually obeyed, is no less a patriot than
he who bares his bosom to the hostile steel in the ranks of his
country's soldiery.

For fortitude is not only seen
resplendent on the field of battle and amid the clash of arms, but
he displays its energy under every difficulty and against every
assailant. He who wars against cruelty, oppression, and hoary
abuses, fights for his country's honour, which these things soil;
and her honour is as important as her existence. Often, indeed, the
warfare against those abuses which disgrace one's country is quite
as hazardous and more discouraging than that against her enemies in
the field; and merits equal, if not greater reward.

For those
Greeks and Romans who are the objects of our admiration employed
hardly any other virtue in the extirpation of tyrants, than that
love of liberty, which made them prompt in seizing the sword, and
gave them strength to use it. With facility they accomplish the
undertaking, amid the general shout of praise and joy; nor did they
engage in the attempt so much as an enterprise of perilous and
doubtful issue, as a contest the most glorious in which virtue could
be signalized; which infallibly led to present recompense; which
bound their brows with wreaths of laurel, and consigned their
memories to immortal fame.

But he who assails hoary abuses,
regarded perhaps with a superstitious reverence, and around which
old laws stand as ramparts and bastions to defend them; who
denounces acts of cruelty and outrage on humanity which make every
perpetrator thereof his personal enemy, and perhaps make him looked
upon with suspicion by the people among whom he lives, as the
assailant of an established order of things of which he assails only
the abuses, and of laws of which he attacks only the violations,--he
can scarcely look for present recompense, nor that his living brows
will be wreathed with laurel. And if, contending against a dark
array of long-received opinions, superstitions, obloquy, and fears,
which most men dread more than they do an army terrible with
banners, the Mason overcomes, and emerges from the contest
victorious; or if he does not conquer, but is borne down and swept
away by the mighty current of prejudice, passion, and interest; in
either case, the loftiness of spirit which he displays merits for
him more than a mediocrity of fame.e has already lived too long
who has survived the ruin of his country; and he who can enjoy life
after such an event deserves not to have lived at all. Nor does he
any more deserve to live who looks contentedly upon abuses that
disgrace, and cruelties that dishonour, and scenes of misery and
destitution and brutalization that disfigure his country; or sordid
meanness and ignoble revenges that make her a by-word and a scoff
among all generous nations; and does not endeavour to remedy or
prevent either.

Not often is a country at war; nor can every
one be allowed the privilege of offering his heart to the enemy's
bullets. But in these patriotic labours of peace, in preventing,
remedying, and reforming evils, oppressions, wrongs, cruelties, and
outrages, every Mason can unite; and every one can effect something,
and share the honour and glory of the result.

For the
cardinal names in the history of the human mind are few and easily
to be counted up; but thousands and tens of thousands spend their
days in the preparations which are to speed the predestined change,
in gathering and amassing the materials which are to kindle and give
light and warmth, when the fire from heaven shall have descended on
them. Numberless are the sutlers and pioneers, the engineers and
artisans, who attend the march of intellect. Many move forward in
detachments, and level the way over which the chariot is to pass,
and cut down the obstacles that would impede its progress; and these
too have their reward. If they labour diligently and faithfully in
their calling, not only will they enjoy that calm contentment which
diligence in the lowliest task never fails to win; not only will the
sweat of their brows be sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that
follows; but, when the victory is at last achieved, they will come
in for a share in the glory; even as the meanest soldier who fought
at Marathon or at King's Mountain became a sharer in the glory of
those saving days; and within his own household circle, the
approbation of which approaches the nearest to that of an approving
conscience, was looked upon as the representative of all his
brother-heroes; and could tell such tales as made the tear glisten
on the cheek of his wife, and ]it up his boy'.s eyes with an
unwonted sparkling eagerness. Or, if he fell in the fight, and his
place by the fireside and at the table at home was thereafter
vacant, that place was sacred; and he was often talked of there in
the long winter evenings; and his family was deemed fortunate in the
neighbourhood, because it had had a hero in it, who had fallen in
defence of his country.

Remember that life's length is not
measured by its hours and days but by that which we have done
therein for our country and kind. A useless life is short. if it
last a century; but that of Alexander was long as the life of the
oak, though he died at thirty-five. We may do much in a few years,
and we may nothing in a lifetime. If we but eat and drink and sleep,
and everything go on around us as it pleases; or if we live but
amass wealth or gain office or wear titles, we might as well not
have lived at all; nor have we any right to expect
immortality.

Forget not, therefore, to what you have devoted
yourself in this Degree: defend weakness against strength, the
friendless against the great, the oppressed against the oppressor !
Be ever vigilant and watchful of the interests and honour of your
country! and may the Grand Architect of the Universe give you that
strength and wisdom which shall enable you well and faithfully to
perform these high duties!

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